I haven’t actually eaten a sandwich today, but I have been pondering this concept for two or three days now. Why is it that if I slap together a sandwich it tastes pretty good (I can make a killer sandwich), but if someone else throws down some white bread with PB&J it is undeniably better. I don’t want to tweely suggest that it is made better with love or something like that. Plus I’d like to think I put some love and attention into my own sandwiches. I would like to know if this is true for everyone. I do wonder if it is more true for people who cook professionally or who usually do all of the cooking where they live. It then might taste better simply because you didn’t have to make it to eat it. That makes sense to me.
Not that these are terribly deep thoughts, but I am feeling more philosophical with Keifel out of the country. It always makes me nervous even though he does have his green card now and it shouldn’t be a problem. I worry anyway. And when I worry actively on one thing it tends to leak all over everything else. And it gives me migraines. Dammit.
I have often bemoaned the fact that I sometimes feel like my brain isn’t being used for the greater good (I have bemoaned this here in previous posts which you may have skipped for the high pitched whine they emitted). Not that feeding people isn’t sometimes complicated and it is almost always noble on some level. It’s just that well… should I have used my intellect for rocket science or cancer research or a cure for spinal cord injuries? I spent all this time being a humanities major and writing about my own “pain” as a poet. Talk about some cringe-worthy reading. You’ll have to trust me on this one. Then I worried about being what I thought I was supposed to be, because I’d received this great free education and blah, blah, blah. Maybe I just can’t be satisfied with whatever it is I am currently doing. Maybe that is a good thing and avoids stagnating at a phase. I am not equating doing this thing, here, now with futility, just suggesting that maybe constantly having true contentment just out of reach is a good thing. Of course, being content in my relationship and in myself aside from work-type issues may be the reason I have the luxury to be philosophical about the work-type issues in the first place. Okay, I’m done staring at my own belly button. Want to see the cake I made for a friend of Keifel’s at work for a Thanksgiving birthday?
Hey, look! It’s a… fat unicorn on a Ferrari logo.
That is the absolute truth even peanut butter and jelly tastes better when someone else makes it.
“Sandwiches always taste better when someone else makes them …”
To borrow a line from Barney Fife, “Man, you are sooooo right.”
In 2002, I consumed – inhaled – a muffuletta sandwich in New Orleans’ famous Central Grocery. To say that said sandwich wanted to make me slap my pappy is a PROFOUND understatment.
If’n you’re hell-bent on making an “official” muffuletta in Nashville, you won’t have any trouble finding the ingredients:
You can get the bread, meats, and cheeses at the Italian Market near Charlotte Pike; and you can purchase a Louisiana-made olive salad at the Apple Market on Nolensville Road. Put it all together and you have a damn-fine mufuletta sammich … but you won’t mistake it for one you could get at the Central Grocery, indeed!
Same goes for the Philly cheesesteaks I tried to recreate – having dined at Geno’s AND Pat’s when I attended the 2000 Republican National Convention – with Wal-Mart-bought Cheese Whiz, baguettes, strip steak and onions. I couldn’t do it!
Joltin’ Django
Nashville, Tennessee
P.S. Don’t EVEN encourage me to tell you when I tried to make a Rotier’s cheeseburger on French bread … ‘twern’t pretty.